1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a connector assembly, especially to a lower profile connector assembly mounted to a board or substrate.
2. Description of Related Art
A board-mount connector assembly is widely used in an electronic device. The board-mount connector assembly commonly includes a board/substrate with a number of conductive pads or conductive holes, a connector with an insulative housing and a number of contacts assembled to the insulative housing. The connector is placed on the board/substrate, and the contacts have tail portions soldered to the conductive pads or the conductive pads by SMT or T/H process. However, as the contacts are connected with conductive pads, therefore transmitting path for signals from the connector to other relative components of a system is limited by the board/substrate, sometimes it is not convenient for customer.
As development of electronic industry, an electronic device becomes more and more compact, and components thereof are also required smaller correspondingly. Designers have chosen all methods to reduce dimension of a board-mount connector assembly. Now, a sink type board-mount connector assembly is widely accepted by designers, as sink type connector assembly is smaller than other kinds of board-mount connector assembly, either its dimension along a vertical direction or a longitudinal direction.
For example, TW Pat. No. M377771 on Apr. 1, 2009 issued to He discloses a sink type connector assembly. The connector assembly includes a board with a cutout for a corresponding connector placed therein. The connector has a shielding member with two tabs formed thereon and further gripping the board so as to have the connector reliably mounted to the board. However, relative arrangement between the connector and the board can not be adjusted, as Spec of the connector has been preset.
In another application, a board-mount connector is a port for a memory card assembly.
In current market, one Giga-Byte or larger chips using flash-memory technologies with electrically-erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) are available. Small flash-memory cards have been designed to have a connector that can be plugged into a specialized (special/particular) reader, such as for compact-flash, secure-digital, memory stick, or other standardized formats. Recently, flash memory cards are sold with a USB port. Such USB-flash memory cards do not require a specialized reader but can be plugged into a USB connector on a personal computer (PC) or other hosting device. These USB-flash memory cards can be used to replace floppy disks and are known as USB key drives, USB thumb drives, and a variety of other names. These USB-flash cards can have a storage capacity of more than ten floppy disks in an area not much larger than a large postage stamp.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,438,562 on Oct. 21, 2008 issued to Ni et al. discloses universal serial bus (USB) flash-memory device. The device has an integrated slim Universal-Serial-Bus (USB) connector that fits into a standard USB socket. The slim USB connector has four metal contacts on a circuit board that is encapsulated by a plastic case. Components are mounted onto the circuit board. A plastic cover encloses the circuit board. However, as the USB connector is also a part of the flash-memory device, and could not be demounted from the flash-memory device, and may bring some problem in repairing process.
Hence, an improved board-mount connector assembly is required to overcome the problems of the prior art.